Filipino
Filipino
Updated 00:41am (Mla time) Dec 22, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 22, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I FINALLY got to attend Fernando Poe Jr.'s wake last Sunday. Though I had seen and heard the sights and sounds in Sto. Domingo Church on TV, almost till they were coming out of my eyes and ears, I was not prepared for what I beheld.
The line of people queuing to pay their last respects to FPJ stretched from the gate of Sto. Domingo to several blocks away. I know that because I passed them down Quezon Avenue while looking for a place to park. Finding the task impossible, I turned around and headed back to my daughter's place in Roxas District. I left my car there and took a jeepney instead. I was glad I did. It didn't just make the journey to Sto. Domingo faster, it made the journey from one world to another possible.
It was certainly a different world from the one that surrounded Ninoy Aquino's wake. Both drew a huge crowd spontaneously, one that seemed to come from nowhere and was inexhaustible. But the smells were different.
Ninoy's wake resonated with grief and anger, the anger rising above the grief, which, almost unbidden, conjured the words, "Tama na, sobra na, palitan na!" FPJ's wake resonated as well with grief and anger, but with the grief rising above the anger, the crowd that gathered yoked together by a shared pain, an indescribable loss. No small thanks to Susan Roces, who demanded by personal example to rein in the political element. Maybe the explosion would come, but not from this. Not if the aggrieved widow could help it.
The physical smells were certainly worlds apart. The crowd that filed past Ninoy smelled of money and privilege, starch and cologne. The crowd that filed past FPJ smelled of earth and sandals, tenuous lives and fragile dreams. It was the rich and powerful with a sprinkling of the masa that turned out to grieve for Ninoy and curse the hand that dealt him a cruel blow. It was the poor and downtrodden with a sprinkling of the rich and powerful that turned out to grieve for FPJ and curse the hand that dealt him a cruel blow.
The crowd last Sunday waited patiently in line, those who had reached the church grounds getting balm for their pains with an old FPJ movie that played out from a telon that had been unfurled there. Maybe there were some diehard fans who had sought to escape life for a while by catching a glimpse of Da King as he lay lifeless inside the church. But they were the exception, not the rule. This was not a gaggle of giggly geese greeting tragedy with curiosity and laughter. These were folk that had to wake up the next day to drive the jeepney and ball the jack, spin the factory machines and pound the pavement to sell chicharon, and care for the babies while doing the laundry for themselves and others. These were people who had better things to do but who found nothing better that night than to say thank you to a man who had enriched their lives, defined the terms of their existence, and taught them to dream even as his own was snatched from him by a pickpocket who was not from Quiapo.
These were drivers and mechanics and clerks and dishwashers and waiters and students and public school teachers and housekeepers. These were ordinary folk. These were Filipinos.
I remembered again Susan Roces bitterly noting the irony of Malacañang offering to bury FPJ in the Libingan ng mga Bayani after making him out to be a non-Filipino. True, there could be no richer irony. I protested it early this year, provoking some of my friends to ask why I was defending FPJ when I balked at the thought of him becoming the president of this country. The answer was simple: it was injustice in the extreme. I might not have wanted him to become president, but I did not want him not to become president that way. Not all is fair in love and war.
If there was anyone who could justifiably claim to be the Filipino Everyman, it was FPJ. Mang Pandoy just happened to be poor and hungry, which is what physically the Filipino Everyman is. FPJ gave a face to the Filipino Everyman. For good or ill, he defined through the heroic roles he played the qualities Filipinos--though for the most part, male Filipinos--have aspired for: quietness, humility, physical, and moral strength.
Arguably, legal technicalities do play a part in the determination of a person's citizenship. But in this country particularly, where law is often used to justify iniquity, they are not the most important thing of all. In any case, the legal technicalities against FPJ were merely manufactured. But even if they weren't so, enforcing them would have meant blotting out from all memory the last half-century of popular culture in this country.
The great unwashed did not go to FPJ's wake to mourn a movie star, they did so to mourn someone who had walked by their side in the journey of life, much as he had done in his movies. They came to mourn a kuya, a constant companion, a good man. They came to mourn someone who had lived as unobtrusively heroically in life as he had done in the movies: someone who helped others without drawing attention to himself, someone who got way up the road but who never forgot where he started, someone who never tried to pass himself off as something he was not. They came to mourn Panday, one who helped to build hope in their lives and kept it standing amid the lashing winds.
They came to mourn some of the best of what it meant to be Filipino.
* * *
My deepest thanks to the musicians and graphic artists and production people who made our benefit for the storm victims last Monday a huge success. It will take a whole column to write about them. My deepest thanks as well to those who went there and supported the cause. Your reward is the joy, or sigh of relief, you will give others this Christmas. May the world be as generous to you in your hour of need.
Updated 00:41am (Mla time) Dec 22, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 22, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I FINALLY got to attend Fernando Poe Jr.'s wake last Sunday. Though I had seen and heard the sights and sounds in Sto. Domingo Church on TV, almost till they were coming out of my eyes and ears, I was not prepared for what I beheld.
The line of people queuing to pay their last respects to FPJ stretched from the gate of Sto. Domingo to several blocks away. I know that because I passed them down Quezon Avenue while looking for a place to park. Finding the task impossible, I turned around and headed back to my daughter's place in Roxas District. I left my car there and took a jeepney instead. I was glad I did. It didn't just make the journey to Sto. Domingo faster, it made the journey from one world to another possible.
It was certainly a different world from the one that surrounded Ninoy Aquino's wake. Both drew a huge crowd spontaneously, one that seemed to come from nowhere and was inexhaustible. But the smells were different.
Ninoy's wake resonated with grief and anger, the anger rising above the grief, which, almost unbidden, conjured the words, "Tama na, sobra na, palitan na!" FPJ's wake resonated as well with grief and anger, but with the grief rising above the anger, the crowd that gathered yoked together by a shared pain, an indescribable loss. No small thanks to Susan Roces, who demanded by personal example to rein in the political element. Maybe the explosion would come, but not from this. Not if the aggrieved widow could help it.
The physical smells were certainly worlds apart. The crowd that filed past Ninoy smelled of money and privilege, starch and cologne. The crowd that filed past FPJ smelled of earth and sandals, tenuous lives and fragile dreams. It was the rich and powerful with a sprinkling of the masa that turned out to grieve for Ninoy and curse the hand that dealt him a cruel blow. It was the poor and downtrodden with a sprinkling of the rich and powerful that turned out to grieve for FPJ and curse the hand that dealt him a cruel blow.
The crowd last Sunday waited patiently in line, those who had reached the church grounds getting balm for their pains with an old FPJ movie that played out from a telon that had been unfurled there. Maybe there were some diehard fans who had sought to escape life for a while by catching a glimpse of Da King as he lay lifeless inside the church. But they were the exception, not the rule. This was not a gaggle of giggly geese greeting tragedy with curiosity and laughter. These were folk that had to wake up the next day to drive the jeepney and ball the jack, spin the factory machines and pound the pavement to sell chicharon, and care for the babies while doing the laundry for themselves and others. These were people who had better things to do but who found nothing better that night than to say thank you to a man who had enriched their lives, defined the terms of their existence, and taught them to dream even as his own was snatched from him by a pickpocket who was not from Quiapo.
These were drivers and mechanics and clerks and dishwashers and waiters and students and public school teachers and housekeepers. These were ordinary folk. These were Filipinos.
I remembered again Susan Roces bitterly noting the irony of Malacañang offering to bury FPJ in the Libingan ng mga Bayani after making him out to be a non-Filipino. True, there could be no richer irony. I protested it early this year, provoking some of my friends to ask why I was defending FPJ when I balked at the thought of him becoming the president of this country. The answer was simple: it was injustice in the extreme. I might not have wanted him to become president, but I did not want him not to become president that way. Not all is fair in love and war.
If there was anyone who could justifiably claim to be the Filipino Everyman, it was FPJ. Mang Pandoy just happened to be poor and hungry, which is what physically the Filipino Everyman is. FPJ gave a face to the Filipino Everyman. For good or ill, he defined through the heroic roles he played the qualities Filipinos--though for the most part, male Filipinos--have aspired for: quietness, humility, physical, and moral strength.
Arguably, legal technicalities do play a part in the determination of a person's citizenship. But in this country particularly, where law is often used to justify iniquity, they are not the most important thing of all. In any case, the legal technicalities against FPJ were merely manufactured. But even if they weren't so, enforcing them would have meant blotting out from all memory the last half-century of popular culture in this country.
The great unwashed did not go to FPJ's wake to mourn a movie star, they did so to mourn someone who had walked by their side in the journey of life, much as he had done in his movies. They came to mourn a kuya, a constant companion, a good man. They came to mourn someone who had lived as unobtrusively heroically in life as he had done in the movies: someone who helped others without drawing attention to himself, someone who got way up the road but who never forgot where he started, someone who never tried to pass himself off as something he was not. They came to mourn Panday, one who helped to build hope in their lives and kept it standing amid the lashing winds.
They came to mourn some of the best of what it meant to be Filipino.
* * *
My deepest thanks to the musicians and graphic artists and production people who made our benefit for the storm victims last Monday a huge success. It will take a whole column to write about them. My deepest thanks as well to those who went there and supported the cause. Your reward is the joy, or sigh of relief, you will give others this Christmas. May the world be as generous to you in your hour of need.
posted by Dante at 12:41 AM
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